27-Jan-11: The shooter was shot, and the funders are (once again) robbed

Seven days ago, we blogged here (20-Jan-11: Another shooter shot) about yet another in a long line of armed, screaming Islamist terrorists stopped permanently by Israeli service personnel at an Israeli security checkpoint while doing his best to create some new Jewish victims of a Palestinian Arab shooting attack. His kinsman, with the same surname, had done much the same thing three weeks ago - and fortunately that ended the same way.

Now we want to tell you about the aftermath.

The invaluable analysts at Palestine Media Watch quote the Fatah newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida in its Tuesday edition (25th January) reporting on how the 'moderate' Palestinian Arab president Mahmoud Abbas reacted to last Thursday's terrorist attack.

He condemned it absolutely and unequivocally, right? Not exactly.

To be fair, there was an absolute and unequivocal Abbas condemnation of terror this week. But that was an absolute and unequivocal condemnation by Mahmoud Abbas of terrorism in Moscow. (Reminder: Jihadists are believed to be the human bombs who exploded in the Russian capital on Monday. They killed at least 35 people, wounded many dozens more, by attacking the packed arrivals hall of Domodedovo, Moscow’s largest airport.)

Abbas is not the sort of politician who, even on the best of days, expresses anti-terrorism sentiments without some compelling, pragmatic, self-serving reason. To be more direct about this - Abbas, the noted 'moderate', admires terrorists. Greatly, not moderately. And when it suits his purposes, he says the opposite.

A while back (as we blogged here 23-Apr-08: Stop Playing with Puppets), Abbas awarded the Palestinian Authority's very highest medal to two convicted female terrorists currently serving multiple consecutive life terms in an Israeli prison. One of them murdered fifteen men, women and children in a terror bombing attack on Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant in August 2001. It's a massacre seared into our personal memory because it happens to have cost the life of our fifteen year old daughter Malki. It had an entirely different effect on the Palestinian Authority's chairman.

It happens that Abbas is under fire this week from all parts of the Arab and Moslem and Islamist world because of Aljazeera's revelations of alleged "concessions" he is said to have made to the reviled Israelis. The man's extreme discomfort and a need to rehabilitate his damaged image in the wake of the Palileaks may help to explain why Mahmoud Abbas chose this week to reiterate to his Palestinian Arab constituents (in Arabic only) his authentic feelings for the acts of terrorists in one of the ways he personally understands best - the use of other people's money:

"The governor of the Jenin district, Kadura Musa, has awarded a presidential grant to the family of the Shahid (Martyr), Khaldoun Najib Samoudy, during a visit that took place yesterday in the village of Al-Yamoun. The governor noted that the grant is financial aid in the amount of $2,000 that the President [Mahmoud Abbas] is awarding to the relatives of the Shahid, who was recently killed as a Martyr at the Hamra checkpoint by the Israeli occupation forces."

(Sincere appreciation to Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik of Palestine Media Watch for picking this up in the January 25, 2011 edition of Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. That paper is an official mouthpiece of the PLO and presided over by Abbas himself.)

Since Mahmoud Abbas chose to use public funds this week to express his high regard for the terrorism and the terrorist, we ask these questions.

1. Will the numerous countries, and their aid agencies, that today fund the Abbas-controlled Palestinian Authority to an extent without parallel in the history of foreign aid, respond at all to this act of malfeasance? Yes, we know it's a small action in terms of money, but it speaks very loudly because of what it says about the ongoing threat to people's lives. 

2. Does a payment to the family of a terrorist, because of his terrorism, fit with the approved-use-of-funds rules that donor countries apply to their support of the Abbas regime? 

3. If no, will those countries (lead in terms of the size of their gifts by the EU, the US, Japan, Canada, Norway, Germany, Sweden, Spain and France, according to donor data) publicly acknowledge their unwitting connivance in Abbas' policy of double-talk and covert encouragement of terrorism? 

Postscript: Is there anything that ordinary people can do to express their revulsion for this kind of hypocrisy (by Abbas) and head-in-the-sand apathy (of the donors)? Maybe not. But we do want to suggest expressing your revulsion by doing something entirely constructive. Consider making a donation to Keren Malki, the not-for-profit we founded in our daughter's memory.

Keren Malki does very good work on behalf of families - Christians, Moslems, Druze, Jewish and others - who care at home for a seriously disabled child. It's non-sectarian, non-political, efficient and well run. It empowers families who carry a frequently heavy load with little support from other quarters. Keren Malki is proud of its compliance with the highest standards of not-for-profit management practices. Your small contribution can make a large impact.

26-Jan-11: With so much bad news around, it's good to have something comical to smile at

The Iranian media's latest exercise in reality-enhancement (courtesy of the BBC).

22-Jan-11: Ultimately, this is why this ongoing war goes on

From a distance, the tit-for-tat of the Middle East conflict looks simple to understand. It's about human rights. Or it's about occupation. Or it's about American colonialism. And as inane as these grossly simplified wrap-ups are, people fall for them hook, line and sinker.

The hatred that lubricates Arab and Moslem hatred of Israel, of Jews and - to a considerable extent - of Western culture is driven by a non-stop flow of hateful and provocative messaging. In our experience, few people ever see examples, and this is why the people at the Washington DC-based Middle East Media Research Institute (or MEMRI) do such invaluable work translating Arabic-language mainstream television programming into English and making it available on the Web. Unfortunately the mainstream news media essentially ignore the existence of this tidal wave of hatred, and the viewing itself is hard. But if we don't know what is being channeled into the minds of the emerging generation of Arabic-speaking Moslems and Arabs throughout the world, it's going to be near-impossible to make sense of events in our neighbourhood.

The screenshots below come from a video presentation delivered by MEMRI to a conference of the UN Human Rights Council in September 2010. The video itself can be seen by clicking on the first screenshot below. It's 23 minutes of extracts from programs broadcast by Egyptian, PA and Hamas television.

New Trends in Arabic Anti-semitism from Henrik Clausen on Vimeo.

All of the images below are extracted from the video.

From a sports show on Egyptian television - the commentator is explaining whom he supports in the World Cup and the reason why. 

From a Nazi-made film of massacred Jews, shown on Hamas TV...

...for its inspirational value!

There's nothing new in any of this. And there's little anyone can do about it, given the massive quantities of such output and the vast and financially-unlimited support that makes the output possible. But we need to know about this if we have any hope of making sense of the sea of jihadist and Islamist hatred that, more and more, is setting the agenda in Western societies.

21-Jan-11: Quote of the day - Europe's Moslem Lobby

"Europeans often fantasize about America's so-called Jewish lobby. But few Europeans like to talk about the growing influence of Europe's Muslim lobby, a conglomeration of hundreds of Muslim political and religious organizations - many of which are media-savvy mouthpieces for militant Islam that openly pursue anti-European, anti-Western and anti-Semitic agendas and often receive financial support from Islamic fundamentalist countries like Saudi Arabia. 

"In a Europe where the number of Muslims has tripled over the past 30 years, Europe's Muslim lobby is becoming increasingly assertive and skilled at pressuring European policy-makers into implementing countless pro-Islamic policies, especially ones that institutionalize Islamic Sharia law. 

"Muslim lobby groups are also exerting significant influence on European policy in the Middle East, resulting in a notable hardening of official European attitudes toward Israel.

"A report commissioned by the EU's Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (now called the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights) found that Muslim immigrants are largely responsible for the sharp increase in anti-Semitic violence in Europe. Predictably, Muslim lobby groups pressured the EU into preventing that report from being released to the general public."

Source:  Europe's Muslim Lobby, Soeren Kern
Published January 20, 2011
Hudson Institute, New York

20-Jan-11: Another shooter shot

A Palestinian Arab man in his twenties and riding a donkey approached an IDF security checkpoint this morning in the vicinity of Jenin in the Samaria district of the West Bank, close to the Israeli community of Mevo Dotan. He dismounted and approached  the checkpoint on foot. From 50 meters away he began shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ and opened fire with a rifle, an AK-47. The Israeli soldiers manning the post fired a warning shot in the air, as required by IDF rules. He failed to stop. They then opened fire on the running shooter and killed him. An IDF report says representatives of the Red Crescent removed his body.

AFP quotes Palestinian Arab officials who said the dead man was Saalem Mohammed Samudi. His relative, Khaldun Samudi, was neutralized by IDF soldiers as he ran towards a checkpoint with a pipe bomb in his hand, shouting Islamic slogans. At the time, that relative was said to be a terrorist connected to Islamic Jihad in Jenin. AFP says today's shooter too was an Islamic Jihad terrorist though family members denied to reporters that he belonged to what AFP calls a "militant group". The Jerusalem Post says today's Samudi attack was an act of vengeance for the previous Samudi death, and quotes relatives of today's deceased shooter saying he sought to avenge the death of that relative, killed two weeks ago at a different security checkpoint in the Jordan Valley.

18-Jan-11: Quotes of the day

The quotes today are from Iran.

Reuters says the ruling regime in Teheran "has been developing contacts in more than 30 countries to acquire technology, equipment and raw materials needed to build a nuclear bomb" according to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten  on Sunday. It says: "More than 350 Iranian companies and organizations were involved in the pursuit of nuclear and missile technology between 2006 and 2010... "A race exists between the bomb and [Iranian] financial collapse," a French nuclear expert is quoted by the Norwegians as saying.

Iran's president has expressed his feelings on how things are developing. This source says Ahmadinejad told a group of official IRNA news agency staff today (Tuesday): "Tens of resolutions will not stop Iran's nuclear drive. We drive our peaceful nuclear program ahead day by day... If the Western countries issue tens of other resolutions against Iran, the resolutions will not have any impact on our country's will..." And from another source today: "We are making progress in the nuclear field and they can say and do whatever they want... They can even issue 100,000 resolutions... like we care."


You can't fault the man's clarity.

18-Jan-11: Trouble in the south today continues

Gaza: IDF fires rocket at explosives-carrying operatives
Published: 01.18.11, 15:05: IDF troops launched a tank rocket at two terrorists that came near the border fence in the north of the Gaza Strip, apparently carrying explosives. At least one of the operatives was hit.

IDF opens fire at two Palestinians on Gaza border
Latest update 15:18 18.01.11  Israel Defense Forces soldiers opened fire on Tuesday towards two Palestinians approaching the fence on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip near Kibbutz Kfar Aza. One of the Palestinians was apparently wounded by a shell fired by an IDF tank. The IDF said that the Palestinians were attempting to plant an explosive device near the border fence. There were no IDF casualties in the incident.

18-Jan-11: In Israel's south, scenes from an ongoing war

Not such a quiet day in the ongoing war on Israel's southern border today. First, a report in the past hour of four more Gazan mortar shells striking Israeli territory around 1.30pm local time. Next, from Ynet, a report of a rocket (not a mortar) fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip in the last hour or two and crashing into an open area in the Western Negev. And another Chinese source, quoting the Hamas terrorist organization, says a Hamas terrorist died today at the age of 23 when a tunnel under Gaza's southern border with Egypt collapsed; he was evidently inside doing something they could not immediately describe. Fortunately, with the exception of the discontinued terrorist career that ended underground, there are neither injuries to humans nor damage to property reported so far.

16-Jan-11: Chinese source has some puzzling things to say this morning

We're not sure what to make of this Xinhua newsagency report going out on the wires right now.

News Analysis: Hamas faces dilemma in keeping Gaza's peace

English.news.cn   2011-01-16 01:54:53 | Saud Abu Ramadan

GAZA, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- The deposed Hamas government announced last week that it had reached a deal with other factions and militant groups to maintain calm in the Gaza Strip to avoid another destructive Israeli war on the coastal enclave since 2007. According to Hamas, the leaders of the factions attended the meeting on Wednesday accepted the deal and refrained from firing mortars and homemade rockets to Israel. However, unknown militants refused to respect the deal and fired two rockets on Friday at Israel. The deposed premier of Hamas government Ismail Haneya has given instructions to his interior affairs minister and chiefs of security to restore calm, and hundreds of security and police personnel were deploying along the border between the enclave and Israel... One homemade rocket was fired on Friday, and there was an attempt late Friday night to launch a home-made rocket at Israel. In both cases, there was no Israeli retaliation, which shows that Israel is also ready to cooperate.

Exactly which terrorist regime and/or which premier was deposed is not clear to us, even after Mr Saud Abu Ramadan's report. As for "home-made" rockets being fired into Israel on Friday and/or failing in the attempt, we have not yet seen or heard any reports from this side of the fence. So we'll keep checking.

12-Jan-11: Quote of the day

Writing in the online journal The National Interest, Middle East historian Prof Benny Morris asks in his article Muslims and Truth:

What are the bounds of credulity in the mendacity-ridden Muslim societies of the Middle East? Can preachers and spokesmen say anything, however outlandish, and expect the masses to eat it up? Is there no limit to what the infidel can be accused of—and to the expectation that the charge will stick. Which raises the still more profound question: What are the long-term prospects for peaceful cohabitation on planet Earth between us in the West and these Muslim societies in which truth has absolutely no traction or importance, where the masses will believe—ask any pollster—that the CIA or the Mossad knocked down the Twin Towers on 9/11?

12-Jan-11: How the jihadists have cemented power and gotten rich, with unwitting donors footing the bill

Gaza City downtown

Journalists Ehud Yaari and Eyal Ofer published an analysis this week on the website of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Entitled "Gaza's Economy: How Hamas Stays in Power", it illustrates just how ineffective the measures to curb the Hamas terror organization have been.

Selected highlights:

• Hamas, when it won the 2006 Gaza elections, was in deep financial trouble. It longer is. The Hamas of 2011 is "a well-funded conglomerate".
• Hamas is reaping the benefits of having mastered the art of exploiting the strong cashflow of aid money sent by foreign donors the Palestinian Authority and intended to benefit the general Gazan Arab population. This has worked spectacularly well. Much, maybe most, of the money intended to address the hardship of Gaza's poor has, the authors say, gone to waste.
• The cash resources available to Hamas grew from $40 million five years ago to $540 million. 
• Inparallel, Hamas has dumped the burden of responsibility for Gaza's 1.6 million residents onto others. Money, as bankers like to say, is fungible. The parties who think they are contributing aid to poor Gazan Arabs are in fact enriching Hamas and funding its acts.
• Hamas recently began acquiring businesses and initiating new ventures: the Islamic Bank, the al-Multazim insurance firm, housing projects, hotels, a shopping mall, resorts, agricultural farms, a fish hatchery. Hamas is becoming the largest player in Gaza's private sector.
• How does this river of cash reach Hamas? The authors say it's through the banks, and not via the tunnels. $2 billion per year is transferred into Hamas hands via the Palestinian banking system. 
• $1.2 billion is paid each year into Gaza banks as pensions and salaries for 77,000 Hamas regime employees "kept on the payroll even though they are not working..." This seems to bother no one.
• Israeli military intelligence says payments ("subsidies") from the mullahs of Iran to Hamas run at $100 million annually, channeled mainly into weapons purchases. The PA's 'moderate' president Mahmoud Abbas says, for what it's worth, that Iranian aid is $250-500 million, but he is not believed.
• In 2005, Hamas had 4,000-7,000 military personnel, a small charity and education network and a skeletal party bureaucracy. Today, having gained full control over all government ministries and municipal councils in Gaza, over many civilian agencies, over every security and intelligence service in the territory including the 10,000-strong "blue" police and over many other jobs and patronage-channels, Hamas presides over a $300 million per year payroll. 
• Hamas plays hardball. It squeezes businesses out to eliminate competition. It coerces owners into selling building materials and other goods below market prices or as 'donations' to Hamas. It uses incoming aid and PA money to put its supporters on the Hamas payroll, replacing Fatah loyalists in government jobs and cementing its own power in the process. 
• Lists used by donor agencies to (as they claim) screen for terrorists somehow manage to include very few Hamas operatives (terrorists). Even if this were fixed, screening is done by Hamas' own sympathizers. The unsurprising result: thousands of Hamas members, including many military personnel with fake civilian positions, have their salaries funded by outside donors.
• Hamas itself refuses to reveal its budget or its sources of income. The numbers it publishes are considered nonsense by analysts. 
• Nothing currently in place prevents Hamas from continually exploiting this absurd situation.

For their analysis of how the terrorists are strengthening their position daily, click to read more.

10-Jan-11: Three rockets fired into Israel tonight

There have been three more rocket attacks on southern Israel tonight (Monday night). The rockets emanated, as the hundreds of others before them, from Hamas-controlled Gaza. Ynet says is reporting that they crashed into an undisclosed (for reasons of basic security) location in the area of Ashkelon, a major coastal city, with one of them landing some 660 feet from "one of the facilities" in the southern city's industrial zone. Fortunately there are no reports of injuries to people, but this - from the jihadists' standpoint - is a matter of potluck. If they can hit innocent people, that's a bonus in their eyes and a highly prized outcome. This is why the world calls them terrorists.

UPDATE Tuesday morning: A fourth incoming rocket is reported by Ynet during the night. The Qassam  crashed into the Eshkol region in the western Negev of southern Israel. Fortunately no injuries are reported.

9-Jan-11: Though barely reported, these rocket attacks are real and people do get hurt

Two additional Qassam missile attacks, beyond the one we reported late last night (Saturday night), were directed at Israel during the night, for a total of three. It's now Sunday morning, and we know of an Israeli truck driver injured by shards of flying glass when one of these rockets crashed into the road and shattered his vehicle's windshield.

Since reports of frequent Gazan rockets and mortars being fired at random targets inside Israel are almost universally unreported, it's highly likely no one in your community knows this. For the record, there were 235 of them in the year just ended. By our (unofficial) count, we have reached at least eighteen (the number may be more) so far in 2011. The head of the Eshkol regional council in southern Israel is quoted in the Israeli media this morning saying "They don't want to call a spade a spade. This war has been taking place for 10 years now." He's of course right. It's why we call our blog This Ongoing War.

Which other nation on earth suffers constant terror attacks on this scale and is expected to suffer them in silence? (Google the expression "Israel must" and you will get about 1.8 million hits. The majority of the references are to things Israel must not do, such as to defend its population.)

8-Jan-11: Another rocket attack tonight

At 9:45pm this evening, Ynet reported yet another Qassam rocket fired into southern Israel from the Gazan vipers' nest. Fortunately no report of injuries or damage, since these firings are generally pot-luck; the terrorists, without exception, have zero interest in distinguishing between military and civilian targets so long as their weapons reach Israel.

8-Jan-11: Three farm workers injured, Gazan jihadists elated, and a bomber is stopped

The terrorists of the Gaza Strip, operating under the Hamas terrorist regime, scored a direct hit today (Saturday). Proudly announcing they had managed to fire off six mortar shells against what they laughably called "a military base", the Islamic Jihad organization took full credit. The reality, as reflected in Israeli reports, is that four mortar shells landed on the grounds of a kibbutz in southern Israel's Sha'ar Hanegev region. Three people were injured (but a Reuters report says two)  inside their residential hut, all of them agricultural contract workers from Thailand, according to Ynet. One suffered moderate to serious injuries, a second one moderate wounds and a third was lightly wounded.

There are reports of a fifth mortar shell landing in an open area in the Eshkol region this evening; fortunately there are no injuries or damage, but it is clear that this not the outcome the jihadists wanted. Experience shows they will keep firing off haphazardly as they tend to do until one of their pot-shots strikes gold.

Another Islamic Jihad "hero" made today's news in the very final stages of his terrorist career. A BBC report says the man leapt from a taxi and ran towards an Israeli security checkpoint east of Nablus (the Jerusalem Post, generally more accurate on matters of Israeli geography, says this was in fact the Bekaot checkpoint in the northern Jordan Valley, just south of Beit She’an), carrying a pipe bomb. A Haaretz report adds that he was shouting an Islamic war cry as he ran. He ignored calls to stop (those calls are part of IDF procedure) and was then promptly shot by the IDF forces. A second bomb was found on his body (according to BBC) as well as a knife (according to Haaretz). AFP quotes the Palestinian Authority's security spokesman, a general called Adnan Zamiri "condemning" what he called "this latest crime by the Israeli occupiers who want to push the Palestinians into confrontation."

For those unfamiliar with local terminology, the "crime" of "pushing the Palestinians into confrontation" that the spokesperson of the 'moderate' PA security forces mentions, is a Palestinian Arab euphemism for Israelis getting on with their lives.

7-Jan-11: Defeating terror: they have their ways, we have ours

Two dimensions of the world's struggle with the terrorists in today's news. And a reminder of the side to which the "moderate" PA regime under Mahmoud Abbas belongs in the war.

Story #1

PA Releases Prisoners Involved in Terror Attacks on Israelis

Khaled Abu Toameh - Jerusalem Post 6th January 2011 (19:48 Israel time): PA President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday ordered the release of six Hamas detainees who were on a hunger strike in a PA prison in Hebron. Israel Radio reported that one of the prisoners, Waed al-Bitar, was involved in a terror attack near Kiryat Arba in which 4 Israelis were killed, and another prisoner was involved in a Dimona area terror attack. More

Story #2

IDF Re-arrests Hamas Members Freed by PA

Haaretz Service, Reuters and DPA - 7th January 2011 (08:18 Israel time): The IDF raided Hebron Friday to re-arrest six Hamas members that the Palestinian Authority had released the day before. The PA had taken the six into custody in September after four Israelis were killed and two injured in two separate shooting attacks in the West Bank. Hamas' military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, took responsibility for both shootings, one of which occurred on the eve of the start of direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations in Washington. The six Hamas members, all Hebron residents, were first held in a PA prison in Bethlehem, south of Hebron, but went on hunger strike, demanding to be moved to Hebron so that their families could visit them. The PA moved only five to Hebron after about 40 days of the hunger strike and following coordination with Israel. The sixth remained in Bethlehem. PA officials said Thursday that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ordered their release after direct appeal from the emir of Qatar.

Two reports separated by half a day - and a difference of 180 degrees in attitude.

In case you have forgotten, the convicted, freed and now re-incarcerated murderer, Waed al-Bitar, named in the Jerusalem Post article, is one of the Hamas thugs who gunned down four unarmed Israeli civilians, two of them women, in September 2010. We reported it (1-Sep-10: Real people, real terror) at the time.

Our September 2010 report of the murders executed by the thugs released this week,
and then recaptured by Israeli forces

Here's a reminder of what we said four months ago, in the wake of these especially cold-blooded killings:

"For those of us who can still summon up a sense of outrage after so much terror, so much hatred, so much hypocrisy, there's the matter of the so-called moderate Palestinian Arabs and their response. In today's New York Times, the Palestinian Authority's prime minister, Salam Fayyad, expresses his condemnation of the murders. These were offenses against the noble Islamic religion. No, sorry, that's not what he said. The perpetrators betrayed the noble and moral aspirations of the Palestinian people. No, sorry, that's not what he said either. Acts of terrorism and jihadist murder like these undermine the Arab right to a two-state solution. No, sorry again, that's not what he said. What Salam Fayyad, a man who knows his people very well, said is:  “We condemn this operation, which contradicts Palestinian interests and the efforts of the Palestinian leadership to garner international support for the national rights of our people.”  As so often in the past, the "condemnation" (which is really not condemnation but tactical criticism) is entirely focused on the effect it might have on other people's support. Where you stand on terror, terrorism and terrorists says everything about your morality, decency and values. The Palestinian Arab position, in its moderate and other forms, is out there for all to see."

Small wonder the PA had so few qualms about freeing the Jew-killers barely four months later.

We don't know where the organs of the European Union stand on the morality of the murders, the release of the killers, or their recapture and reimprisonment. We do know that at about the same time Abbas, president of one of the two Palestinian Arab regimes, was signing the order yesterday for the release of the terrorists from a PA jail to appease the leaders of the other Palestinian Arab regime, he was spending happy-face time with the EU's foreign minister, Catherine Ashton.

The image of arch-terrorist Arafat beaming down at the two of them seems quite apt in the circumstances.

7-Jan-11: UK authorities say there is no imminent terrorist threat. On the other hand...

Reports in the past few hours (Hindustan Times and Associated Press) quote an unnamed security source in London saying there is no imminent terrorist threat, and the overall terrorist threat level has not changed.

With that laconic introduction, the reports say:

• There is British activity from extremist cells that cause concern
• There has been either "an adjustment in policing levels" or "Police increase presence in London", depending on the specific publication 
• Police have been freshly deployed at transport hubs in London in the past 24 hours 
• Intelligence intercepts are unclear as to whether the terrorists are planning Mumbai-style shootings, or suicide bombing attacks, or both.
• Transport police were told to cancel days off Friday (today), according to Sky News on Thursday
• There is a heavy police presence near Luton and Heathrow airports and members of the emergency services were briefed very recently about how to respond to a Mumbai-style attack on London (Sky News)
• British police have set the level of the threat at "severe". This is the second highest level, meaning an attack is highly likely. 

They have been on high alert since September 2010 when intelligence agencies said they were aware of pending attacks in France, Germany and the UK. The plans were at an advanced stage. Since then, 10 Moslems, all of them with Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds, were arrested in the UK and charged with plotting pre-Xmas terror attacks. On 11-Dec-11, a jihadist who had been living in the UK for years blew himself up in Stockholm while heading towards the city's central train station. And in Denmark a week ago, five men were arrested on similar charges, with a cache of weapons including a submachine gun, silencer and ammunition in their possession.

Google the term "no terror threat" and you are likely to get hundreds of thousands of hits. That statistic reflects what people used to call whistling past the graveyard (trying to stay cheerful in a dire situation). So yes, there is no threat this afternoon. And yes, jihadism is alive, well and thriving. But no, we cannot afford to lower our guard if we want to keep our families and societies safe.

Journalists and editors publishing those headlines about no imminent threat does not mean they know more about this vexed subject than the rest of us. In fact there's a strong case that, with the agenda-driven political mindsets of some of them, they know less. We owe it to ourselves to prepare accordingly.

7-Jan-11: If these terror attacks go unreported, did they happen?

AP's contribution yesterday

We know from experience that it is simply not possible to understand terrorism or the fight to defeat terrorism without knowing what is being done in the name of terrorism. So drawing on Israel Defence Force news sources here is a summary of what this past week delivered.

• Saturday 1-Jan-11: A single Qassam rocket fired into Israel from Gaza crashed into open land within the Sha’ar Hanegev region of southern Israel. Some 6,500 people live in the vicinity. Fortunately no one on the Israeli side was hurt.
• Sunday 2-Jan-11: Another Gazan rocket was fired into Israel, landing in the Eshkol region of southern Israel where some 10,000 people live. None of them was injured, thankfully, but that was not the intention of the jihadists.
• Tuesday 4-Jan-11: Another Qassam rocket from Gaza was fired into Israel [we reported it] and crashed into an undisclosed site within the Hof Ashkelon region, home to to 13,000 residents, causing damage to agricultural buildings (greenhouses are a big piece of Israel's taming of the desert lands). Fortunately no injuries to life or limb, at least on the Israeli side.
• Wednesday 5-Jan-11, seven mortar shells [we reported when the number was only two] were fired into southern Israel's Eshkol region. Despite the multiple attempts, the terrorists failed to cause any loss of life.
• Thursday 6-Jan-11, another rocket fired from Gaza, this time landing in the Sedot Negev region in the south. 8,000 residents live there. Not one of them was hurt, thank heavens.

Last night, Thursday, the IDF struck back at two terror-related sites. Israeli Air Force (IAF) planes hit what it called a terrorist activity center in the northern Gaza Strip, and also a weapons manufacturing facility in the central Gaza Strip, both operated by Hamas, the dominant power in the area. Palestinian Arab sources confirm this and say no humans were hurt.

During 2010, some 235 rockets and missiles (including Grads, Qassams and mortar shells) were fired into Israel by the terrorists of Gaza. The total for 2011, meaning one week, so far, is eleven. Not a single one of them was aimed at a military or strategic target. (This is absolutely not surprising, unless you fail to understand what the terrorists want.)

How may of them were mentioned in any of the news sources that reach your community?

Not knowing what the terrorists do makes it impossible to understand the actions of their victims - Israel, for instance - in taking steps to keep them at bay. The mainstream news media could play a constructive role in this life-and-death interaction; generally they do not. The AP photo above (count the cameras) gives us a taste  of the kind of material many editors prefer.

5-Jan-11: We're not hearing about these incoming rockets - but they keep coming

Of close-to-zero interest to the many journalists plying their trade in this over-reported country, two additional rocket firings occurred this morning (Wednesday) along lines familiar to those of us deeply worried about the steady escalation emanating from the terrorists of Gaza.

As reported by Arutz 7, two explosive shells fired today from the vipers' nest called the Gaza Strip crashed into open fields in the Eshkol Regional Council area. Fortunately, there was no injury to human life and no damage was reported. But this (as we try to point out at every opportunity) is not the intention of the jihadists. It's just the way it works out when you fire, as they do, in the general direction of the other side of the fence without caring one iota for where it lands or whom it hits. Any target, in the eyes of the Islamicist barbarians, is a legitimate target.

There are no caught-in-the-crossfire victims for them, and there never were. If they can hit or hurt someone or something, the ends fully justify the means. Thankfully their technical skills are at a primitive level, like their morality and ethics. So they generally miss. But not always.

Or their rockets and grenades crash on their side of the fence and damage or injure Gazan people or Gazan property which happens frequently but goes largely unreported and unremarked. Virtually no one on the Gazan side - other than the immediate victims - cares. Rocket firing into Israel, beyond the chance that it might deliver Israeli pain, is largely about baiting the Israeli side so that the inevitable civilian injuries and damage that follow from Israeli actions can get into the headlines and the seven o'clock news.

The day is not yet over.

5-Jan-11: Incoming rockets again: zero impact on reporters (as usual); terrifying to the innocent victims

Ashkelon's southern fringe

Qassam rockets were fired into Israel yet again yesterday (Tuesday). The source, as usual: the terrorist gangs of the Hamas-controlled Gazan jihad regime. The target: Any place in Israel where there is a chance of damaging Israeli lives or property. But in fact (as happens so frequently) the rockets (according to Ynet) struck somewhere undisclosed within the administrative region called Hof Ashkelon Regional Council. Fortunately these latest haphazard attempts of the terrorists produced no injuries to people. But there is damage to several greenhouses. The area, entirely desert until Israeli energy and initiative turned it into Israel's very productive vegetable garden in the fifties, is home to numerous agricultural communities. A Haaretz report says one of Tuesday's rockets hit Ashkelon's southern fringe.

If you are looking for conventional media coverage of these attacks, good luck. In normal circumstances rocket attacks like yesterday's would properly be regarded as acts of war if Israel's relations were with a normal sovereign state. But given that we have a border with a dysfunctional, Islamicist puppet client statelet that takes its inspiration and direction from the Mullahs of Teheran, these are instead considered terrorist attacks. And since they exacted no lives, they go unreported.

Not so the Israeli response. Today's syndicated Agence France Press report is headlined "Israeli warplanes hit Gaza: Palestinians".  And Xinhua starts its report thus: "Israeli airplanes attack two targets in Gaza".

Ynet's version: The Air Force attacked two targets in the Gaza Strip Tuesday in response to the firing of Qassam rockets at Israel earlier in the day. The Palestinians did not report any injuries. The IDF Spokesperson's Unit said that in a joint operation with the Shin Bet forces attacked a smuggling tunnel and a terrorist center in the Gaza Strip. According to the Palestinians, the site served as a training base for Hamas's military wing, Izz al-Din al-Qassam. 

Reality check for those of us more-than-fed-up with the selective reportage of news media located far from where the terrorist missiles fall: during 2010, more than 230 rockets and mortar shells were fired into Israel by the Gazans. We are currently (January) in what Israeli observers are calling "an escalation in the area". 

Not an escalation of reporting, of course but of life-threatening violent actions by the hatred-driven religious fanatic barbarians on our southern border.

4-Jan-10: Jerusalem Arabs planned showcase massacre

Jerusalem's Teddy Kollek Stadium

Ignoring the provocative headline ("Israel accuses Palestinian staff at UK consulate in rocket plot inquiry"), the Guardian - along with the entire Israeli press - carries a story today with disturbing implications for Jerusalemites like us.

Four Jerusalem men, all evidently connected with the Hamas jihadists who run the Gaza Strip, were tracked for months by Israeli police while they prepared to execute a rocket attack on this city's main sports arena, the Teddy Kollek Stadium. The announcement of the arrests came from the Shin Bet, Israel's special security service, after a news blackout of some weeks. It included the rather chilling assertion that the accused terrorists systematically checked "how best to launch a projectile when the stadium was crowded with people during a game". The Guardian rather laconically calls it "an alleged plot to fire a rocket at a local football stadium", but it would be more accurate to say this was an attempt to carry out a showcase massacre of innocent non-combatants.

All four live on the east side of our city. Two of the Hamas activists are Mussa Hamada and Bassem Omari. Omari holds Israeli citizenship, and is believed to be behind plans to carry out a separate attack, "possibly a kidnapping", against Israeli soldiers. The remaining two, Mohammed Hamadeh and Bilal Bakhatan, happen to work for Britain's Jerusalem consulate in maintenance roles, and are charged with helping to procure the weapons. It's presumably the British connection that propels this report into the British media.

Reading the Guardian's report, in particular, with its slightly sneering tone and gratuitous references to inflated Palestinian  numbers of casualties in the 2008 flighting in Gaza, you could be struck by how differently this might have been reported. When a plot by Islamicists in Melbourne to blow up the Melbourne Cricket Ground during the playing of the 2005 AFL Grand Final (see this report) was reported in Australia, the media and the public understood only too well how dangerous and despicable the intended terrorism was, and the serious tone of the reports reflected this. We guess it all depends on how much you feel yourself to be in the cross-hairs of the terrorists' weapons.

1-Jan-11: The ordinariness of day-in, day-out terror

The Israel Security Agency published figures Thursday reporting on terror attacks against Israel during 2010. 798 attacks defined as acts of terror were reported in the year just ended. This amounts to more than two acts of terror every day of the year. The report counts 9 people, unarmed and innocent victims, murdered by Palestinian Arab terrorists.

Reminding us that terror happens not in a vacuum but because there are terrorists, the Hamas regime in Gaza issued its own press release yesterday boldly, courageously claiming credit for seven of those Israeli deaths (see this Palestinian news agency report). Their self-congratulation, as far as we can see, has gone entirely unreported.

No unusually dramatic acts of terror happened this week - just more of the ongoing too-familiar toll of bombings, shootings and the calculated sowing of fear. These events did not rate highly enough on the scale of significance or newsworthiness to be reported where you live or even where we do. But for the victims directly impacted by them, this week's acts of terror were a private nightmare. Week after week, year after year, for as long as the astonishing revival of the Jewish homeland in the last decades of the nineteenth century has been underway, the steady drumbeat of terror has been the background to the attempts by people of goodwill to achieve co-existence and peaceful relations.

Among this past week's attacks:

• Today (Saturday) two female soldiers came under attack by a knife-wielding Palestinian Arab man near their base in the Gush Etzion community zone. Soldiers searched the area, found a Palestinian Arab man in possession of a knife and arrested him. He admitted having intended to cause harm to Israelis. (Source)
• Friday, a Jewish shepherd tending his flock in the Maaleh Shomron area of Samaria came under fire from  Palestinian Arab shooters. Soldiers were called in but the attackers got away. (Source)
• Thursday evening, a group of Palestinian Arab men attacked a soldier at the entrance to Kiryat Arba. He suffered injuries to the head in the attack. The assailants are under arrest. (Source)
• Also on Thursday, yet another in a long series of Palestinian Arab rockets was fired into Israel (source - Arab report, describing the terrorists as "Gaza resistance fighters") from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip overnight, exploding around midnight in the Negev desert. 

Meanwhile we are reminded that Islamicist hatred, while relentlessly directed at Jews and Israelis at every opportunity, has additional targets as well. In Egypt last night, a thousand Coptic Christians leaving a New Year's Eve mass in Alexandria came under terrorist attack, leaving 21 dead and more than 80 injured (source). The first reports were that this was a car bombing but it appears now, 24 hours later, that the bomb was delivered by a former human being and not by a vehicle. The Egyptian Interior Ministry is now saying the Alexandria bomb, like the Hamas bomb that took our daughter's life, was filled with nuts and bearings so as to kill and main as many as possible. 

While the Egyptian authorities have claimed last night's terrorism was an attack on Egyptian society from outside, they have some uncomfortable history to deal with that suggests this terror came from within and not so much from outside Egypt. A year ago, seven Egyptians were shot dead by Moslem gunmen as they left a pre-Xmas service at another Coptic church, this one in the town of Naga Hammadi, 600 km south of Cairo. Then in April 2010, in the coastal city of Marsa Matrouh, an enraged mob of some 3,000 Muslims gathered after Friday prayers, exhorted by the local mosque's imam to "cleanse the city of its infidel Christians" (source). The subsequent rampage produced a heavy toll: 18 homes, 23 shops and 16 cars completely destroyed, and 400 Copts forced to barricade themselves in their church for 10 hours until the frenzy passed.

The Wall Street Journal notes that the Egyptian government cynically insists it has no sectarian problem. Those who draw international attention to the plight of Egypt's Christians are, according to the government of Egypt, "traitors". It adds that the United States and other Western democracies, despite repeated Coptic appeals, have done little beyond calling upon the Egyptian regime to foster greater tolerance. 

Small wonder the terror continues there, here and elsewhere. Terror will stop only when governments decide it must be stopped, and this is never going to be easy to do.